RIP 2010

[Alex]

I do not have pop culture separation except insofar as you define pop culture as "music." I define it as much broader than that and think I'm perfectly well connected to most of those other areas.

And I was familiar with the music of Nirvana (it would have been impossible not to be), I just didn't know or care who it was making the music. The existence of Nirvana wasn't news to me, the existence of Kurt Cobain was. Courtney Love remains, to me, first and foremost a actress of some reasonable skill as demonstrated during a short window in the mid-'90s.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

I do not have pop culture separation except insofar as you define pop culture as "music." I define it as much broader than that and think I'm perfectly well connected to most of those other areas.

Complete separation, no, but you've got to admit it's a significant blind spot. While I am now fairly versed in popular music, I was late to the game and very much out of the loop in 1994, but even I knew who Kurt Cobain was (having knowingly heard a Nirvana song maybe twice at the point of his death). I wasn't involved in that aspect of pop culture, but I was definitely aware of the handful of things that were getting mega-attention. To say, "Yeah I'd heard of Nirvana but didn't know the name Kurt Cobain," is kinda like saying, "Sure I've heard of the Lakers, but had never heard of this Kobe Bryant guy." It doesn't make you an anti social freak, but it does kinda make you a surprising and notable anomaly.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by JWBear

Ok. But what about the unicorns and rainbows?

Yes; on Tuesdays during summer months, every other Monday during winter months.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Complete separation, no, but you've got to admit it's a significant blind spot.

Sure, and I have no problem saying a musically retarded. I just havee issues for when that gets expanded to an assumption that I've in no way partaken in the cultural zeitgeist of my time. I'm guessing I know far more about TV, books, movies, Saturday morning cartoons of the '80s, and sugared cereal mascots than the average person.

But when I run into someone who doesn't watch movies I just treat them like someone who doesn't watch movies, not express amazement and how hard it must be to live without a culture (not saying that CP did that, but she did expand it a lot from just being stupid about music).

And to a certain extent a big part of things is that I am horrible at remembering proper nouns. Though I'm sure I've been told the real names for everybody here many times, I wouldn't be able to give them for more than a dozen of the posters here. I'm horrible at remembering book titles and author names and that's in a realm I'm hugely interested. I"m sure that I had heard the name "Kurt Cobain" many, many times before he died. It just had not implanted and the fact that he was from a realm of culture I had no interest in made it even less likely it would happen. Some people suffer from face blindness (Oliver Sachs rears his head again), I sometimes wonder if I suffer from capitalized noun blindness.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Alex

But when I run into someone who doesn't watch movies I just treat them like someone who doesn't watch movies, not express amazement and how hard it must be to live without a culture (not saying that CP did that, but she did expand it a lot from just being stupid about music).

I was about to post that I should have said "music" instead of "pop culture" but in thinking about it more, I think I stand by my statement, not in any way to contradict what you're saying about your areas of expertise. I'm certain you know more than I do on all those topics.

Knowing who Kurt Cobain was in the early 90's didn't mean you knew anything about music. GD mentioned Kobe Bryant - I agree. If you weren't a)in college at the time AND b)in Seattle at the time I might even give you a pass for not being close enough to the affected demographic.

I think what we're talking about is two different meanings to the phrase "knowing pop culture". Knowing the various changes made to Sugar Bear as Sugar Crisp became Golden Crisp means you are a pop culture geek. Debating whether you liked Fruity Pebbles or Cocoa Pebbles better as a kid makes you a part of the pop culture of the time.

I like that I used the phrase "pop culture separation" because I think that embodies the latter definition. If you were an expert on bands of the early 90's and could discuss the rise and fall of grunge endlessly but couldn't remember that it was Quentin Tarantino who directed Pulp Fiction, I would still say you had pop culture separation.

I'm not picking on you, just exploring the concept.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Knowing who Kurt Cobain was in the early 90's didn't mean you knew anything about music. GD mentioned Kobe Bryant - I agree. If you weren't a)in college at the time AND b)in Seattle at the time I might even give you a pass for not being close enough to the affected demographic.

I think you over estimate how pervasive such things are when you're not involved to the geek level. After all, I was a college student. A college student living in dorms. A college student who almost flunked out because I was spending all of my time screwing around with college students and consuming an awful lot of pop culture. None of them were particularly bothered by my cluelessness. It seems only in the hindsight of future years that people are shocked that some icon of culture was unknown. Kind of like all the kids in the '60s who didn't care for Rock and Roll or the other kids in the '70s who never heard about Woodstock until well after it was history.

Yes, it was a gap in my caring that lead to me not particularly knowing who Kurt Cobain was (though I'm sure I would have recognized any Nirvana, Pearl Jam, or Soundgarden (who were much more prominent to me due to their regular appearances on Almost Live) song as one I'd heard before). But up until the moment he died, I think it would have been much more shocking to my peers that I lived in Seattle and didn't drink coffee than that I didn't know who Kurt Cobain was.

It was when he killed himself that everybody -- to my experience -- started acting like he was the central gravitational force of their emotional/spiritual lives. A bigger version of that thing from high school where some kid gets hit by a car and suddenly everybody was his closest friend.

This isn't to say he wasn't an important figure, just that he wasn't an important figure unless you were already steeped in the relatively limited arena in which he was so important.

And this all completely ignores the fact that by 1993 the general sentiment in Seattle was that Grunge was past its time and wouldn't the rest of the country kindly shut up because most of us weren't wearing flannel and knitwear. We even shaved sometimes.